Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction, and the Drama, Vol. 2: A Revised American Edition of the Reader's HandbookBrewer, Ebenezer Cobham
General
Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction, and the Drama, Vol. 2: A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook
Brewer, Ebenezer Cobham
Allusions; Fiction -- Dictionaries; Literature -- Dictionaries
=Glamorgan=, according to British fable, is _gla_ or _glyn_ Morgan
(valley or glen of Morgan). Cundah´ and Morgan (says Spenser) were sons
of Goneril and Regan, the two elder daughters of King Leyr. Cundah
chased Morgan into Wales, and slew him in the glen which perpetuates his
name.
Then gan the bloody brethren both to raine:
But fierce Cundah gan shortly to envy
His brother Morgan ...
Raisd warre, and him in batteill overthrew;
Whence as he to those woody hilles did fly,
Which hight of him Gla-morgan, there him slew.
Spenser, _Faëry Queen_, ii. 10, 33 (1590).
This is not quite in accordance with Geoffrey’s account:
Some restless spirits ... inspired Margan with vain conceits, ... who
marched with an army through Cunedagius’s country, and began to burn all
before him; but he was met by Cunedagius, with all his forces, who
attacked Margan ... and, putting him to flight, ... killed him in a town
of Kambria, which since his death has been called Margan to this
day.—_British History_, ii. 15 (1142).
=Glasgow= (_The Bishop of_).—Sir W. Scott, _Castle Dangerous_, xix.
(time, Henry I.).
=Glasgow Arms=, an oak tree with a bird above it, and a bell hanging
from one of the branches; at the foot of the tree a salmon with a ring
in its mouth. The legend is that St. Kentigern built the city and hung a
bell in an oak tree to summon the men to work. This accounts for the
“oak and bell.” Now for the rest: A Scottish queen, having formed an
illicit attachment to a soldier, presented her paramour with a ring, the
gift of her royal husband. This coming to the knowledge of the king, he
contrived to abstract it from the soldier while he was asleep, threw it
into the Clyde, and then asked his queen to show it him. The queen, in
great alarm, ran to St. Kentigern, and confessed her crime. The father
confessor went to the Clyde, drew out a salmon with the ring in its
mouth, handed it to the queen, and by this means both prevented a
scandal and reformed the repentant lady.
A similar legend is told of Dame Rebecca Berry, wife of Thomas Elton of
Stratford Bow, and relict of Sir John Berry, 1696. She is the heroine of
the ballad called _The Cruel Knight_. The story runs thus: A knight,
passing by a cottage, heard the cries of a woman in labor. By his
knowledge of the occult sciences, he knew that the infant was doomed to
be his future wife; but he determined to elude his destiny. When the
child was of a marriageable age, he took her to the seaside, intending
to drown her, but relented, and, throwing a ring into the sea, commanded
her never to see his face again, upon pain of death, till she brought
back that ring with her. The damsel now went as cook to a noble family,
and one day, as she was preparing a cod-fish for dinner, she found the
ring in the fish, took it to the knight, and thus became the bride of
Sir John Berry. The Berry arms show a fish, and in the dexter chief a
ring.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account